Gym patrons

A sudden culmination of a long standing desire, and the tilting of the weighing scale needle in the wrong direction brought us to the doors of our very own cantonement gym. Out side the door hung an ominous sign. How to dress appropriately(no saris!) and how to maintain proper etiquette(wipe the handle of the equipment off the sweat, donot monopolise the treadmill etc,etc).
Of all the various time slots offered to various group of human beings(officers, lady wives, lady officers, officers'families et al ) we fell into the latter category, yours truly being of the so called weaker gender, accompanied by my chivalrous husband.We had precisely half an hour to put our wrongdoings of a life time to right and "push off" before the next group arrived.
Gradually, a daily pattern emerged and we began to recognise faces as our gym-mates.
The most noticeable entry would be of a family of three, all dressed in audacious black. Almost like the klu klux klan of fitness. Father in shorts, mother in leggings and daughter in knee length capris. Terse orders would be issued to the attendant on their entry, and a blue plastic stool would materialise from the nether end of a gym already bursting with fitness gadgets. On this hapless stool. the patriarch would proceed to perform ingenuous feats , in the name of yoga and work outs, putting Jane Fonda and others of their collective ilk to shame. After every feat, he would breathlessly glance up to see how many eyeballs were swivelled in his direction.Many were indeed, glued to this awesome spectacle.
The mother busied herself on a weight training machine, hitherto , the male domain. The daughter, looking peevish, would cycle on the easiest cycle around, thereby depriving me of my own shammer's throne. The fitness fanatic family carried their own blue bottle of water and strode in with their own towels on their backs. They were all lean and mean and oozed serious business of keeping themselves fit.
Then there was this voyeur. He too took his vocation of seeing people exercising very seriously. He would fix  nervous gym goers, especially the females , with unwavering and  unnerving stares. That people were positively squirming under his relentless gaze made no difference to him. Only backing out when he was stared back. A strategy most females mastered over a period of time. Thereby beginning a different type of game.
Yet another patron was this handsome hunk, who would roll up his sleeves, impossibly upto the arm pits, thereby revealing his' drool-worthy' biceps. He didint have to do much to gain attention. His muscles and abs did the talking.
Another class belonged to the reluctant exercisers. All out of shape and breath, trying hard to tame bodies spoilt by years of indulgence.We belonged to this group. So did a couple of colonels, doing sit ups which they so fondly doled out to their  troops as punishment.
Finally, the narcissist.Taking due advantage of the wall sized mirrors, he would position himself, hands on hips,admiring oneself from various angles, and mentally ticking the areas that needed to be worked upon further.